The Pie's The Thing: A Play, A Pie & A Pint returns

Based in Glasgow's Òran Mór and touring all over Scotland, A Play, A Pie & A Pint produce lunchtime plays that, as the name would suggest, come with a pie and a pint. This season offers a diverse array of new work that celebrates and interrogates identity, storytelling, and Scottishness. The programme of 18 shows includes work from Play, Pie, Pint veterans, like Laila Noble (Bed & Breakfast, Dungeons, Dragons, and the Quest for D***), and promising debuts from new artists, like Hannah McGregor (Ness). 

Ness, directed by Debbie Hannan, tells the story of a young non-binary person who strikes up a friendship with the Loch Ness Monster. McGregor says that it's about "Queerness, Scottishness, and identity". Like much of Play, Pie, Pint's programme, it's an inventive comedy about challenging topics. Queerness appears throughout the programme – "Not just queerness [as] in gender and sexuality," McGregor says, "But undone. The strange and weird and wonderful." 

The season begins at an uncertain time for Scottish theatre makers. After the announcement of a massive cut to Creative Scotland's own funding, and then a soft reversal from the SNP late last year, companies and programmes that have run for years are facing sudden precarity – not to mention new and marginalised artists trying to find space in the industry. 

"It's reassuring to know Play, Pie, Pint are still there and pushing through new writing and interesting things that we've not seen before, and not just playing it safe," McGregor says. Part of Play, Pie, Pint's unique appeal is (perhaps obviously) the pie and pint portion. The plays are shown at lunchtime during the work week. It's an inclusive, relaxed experience compared to the expectations placed on standard audiences. 

While there's plenty of comedy in the programme, McGregor says that there is also room for the "salient and real". They continue: "Sometimes it's nice to go in for something where you're not expecting to be challenged or provoked and coming out feeling like you have been." Ness comments on self-narrativisation, challenging Scottish attitudes toward identities outside of the norm. 

We mythologise and tokenise the creatures of lore, and this both contradicts and confirms the way queer people are treated in Scotland today. McGregor hopes to highlight the way queer people are simultaneously made hyper-visible and invisible by a culture that claims to welcome us, but that does so for only some of us, or under certain conditions. "I wanted to take this pinnacle of Scottish culture and mythology and pair it against something that people seem to be more scared of, that is actually real, is happening." Ness runs from 8-13 April.

A Play, A Pie and A Pint's spring 2024 programme

Play, Pie, Pint's Spring programme speaks to our daily lives in varied ways. The season kicks off with Jack (19-24 Feb), written by Liam Moffat and directed by Gareth Nicholls, a dark comic monologue about a man who doesn't know how to tell his partner that he doesn't want this puppy. 

Laila Noble directs Kirsty Halliday's Bed & Breakfast (26 Feb- 2 Mar), which follows two B&B employees on a less-than-routine day at work. 

Dundee-based company Elfie Picket contributes original songs to Pushin' Thirty (11-16 Mar), written by Taylor Dyson and Calum Kelly and directed by Beth Morton. The play tells the story of two high school friends, now soon-to-be 30 years old, who are accidentally reunited in their hometown of Dundee.

Tamàm Shud (1-6 Apr), written by Thomas Jancis and directed by Andre Agius, is a dark comedy in the style of Alan Bennett. The play is based on the true events surrounding the mysterious murder of the 'Somerton man' in 1948. 

Jen McGregor's Who Pays the Pipe (15-20 Apr), directed by Tom Cooper, explores the requirements and limits of turning your passion into your career. The play, which follows a talented young singer and her ambitious (maybe delusional) student, is a timely interrogation of the arts industry.

Laila Noble also directs a play of her own writing, called Dungeons, Dragons, and the Quest for D*** (21-26 May), in which protagonist Finn teams up with his best friend/dungeon master to find love after having trouble defining his own queer identity. 

Medea on the Mic (10-15 Jun), written by Nazli Tabatabai-Khatambakhsh and directed by Philip Howard, is a queer and feminist retelling of the classic Greek tragedy – though that's only one part of this inventive, Scottish, and hilarious piece. 

Hannah McGregor has been going to A Play, A Pie, and A Pint since their childhood in Glasgow. It's an integral part of the Scottish theatre scene for Scots of all walks of life, and this season has something to offer everyone. McGregor hopes that their brand of humour can "reach across" to audiences who aren't familiar with the content of their writing. The stories that bind us together, they suggest, are deeper and more diverse than we even know.